We're back in the deep freeze again. The relief of several days' temperature hovering just above freezing was, alas, merely temporary, though we could be forgiven for imagining that the moderation in temperature was a hesitant spring's knocking on the door of tenuous opportunity, close to where any reasonable weather element might imagine it was time for winter's excesses to relent.

No such luck.

Back to night-time lows in the minus-20 Centigrade range. Day-time highs now are extremely icy, all the more so given prevailing wind conditions. On the good news front, the sun is also frequently evident in between episodes of light snowfall. So beauty is there in abundance, and continued opportunities to venture out for daily ravine walks.

We hate to put boots on little Riley; while they keep his feet warm, they're impediments to his gait, and he often falls flat on his face, if there's a snow accumulation. About halfway through our hour-and-a-half circuit (that we managed in half that time a decade ago) he picks up speed and galumphs along with us. But on these cold days if we gamble that he'll be able to withstand the cold, my husband ends up carrying him half the way, warming his feet, then putting him back on the trail until he freezes up again.

Yesterday I was no little amused to see the beautiful little whippet that we occasionally come across, wearing a winter coat, and nosing about authoritatively in all the cache spots close to ground level where we usually deposit peanuts. And, for the first time, the svelte cosmopolitan fellow approached me, nuzzling my gloved hand with its peanuts, delicately extracting one, to gobble it down.

His companion, a truly sweet  young man, informed us that the whippet is familiar with all the cache spots, and that in their walks, inspects each one to take advantage of the takings if the squirrels haven't been quick enough to claim them, at those times when our walks intersect.

He isn't, of course, the only dog we come across in the ravine who loves peanuts. Some of them recognize us and devotedly follow our progress, hoping to cadge peanuts from us. Fun for them and for us, as well.

For petty small-mindedness it's hard to beat the Parti Quebecois, and in particular the nasty resentment displayed by the premier of the province, Pauline Marois, whose name could be transliterated as Pauline Malice.

When Canadians saw and celebrated the Olympic Sochi Winter Games wins by Canadians, they were ecstatic, overjoyed for the hard-won victories on the part of the Canadian competitors, and happy for Canada, making its mark in outdoor winter sport activities.

Many Canadians were also no doubt highly impressed at the number of Canadians from Quebec who distinguished themselves so brilliantly by their meticulous performances, and winning accolades resulting in medal presentations. Hearing the Canadian anthem played in such a foreign, exotic setting where the best of the best are recognized and awarded recognition, is a real patriotic boost.

But many people might also have felt a bit of a niggling warning that the sheer numbers of Quebec athletes so distinguishing themselves would give ammunition to those Quebecois who have committed themselves to separation from Canada under the belief that they constitute in and of themselves a 'nation', unto themselves deserving of being a country, alongside but yet apart from all the others that comprise Confederated Canada.

And, sure enough. It started hilariously enough with the doctored photograph of two beautiful young French-Canadian sisters, proudly wearing Canadian Olympic clothing having the symbolic Maple Leaf and colour red exchanged for the Quebec fleur-de-lys and blue. Proudly tweeted by a PQ minister as a Quebec win, for the province, not the country.

The Olympic medal-winning Dufour-Lapointe sisters were originally photographed wearing Canada mittens, but an industrious Photoshopper changed the maple leafs to the Fleur-de-lis. (Twitter) 

No matter that the correct and very real photograph was available to show up the absurdity of that nationalistic chicanery, it just added fuel to the fire of the Parti Quebecois championing of its own, separate and apart from the entire Canadian delegation.

Here's the original photo of the Dufour-Lapointe sisters: 

Chloé and Justine Dufour-Lapointe donned the Bay's Red Mittens as part of the company's campaign to raise money to send Canadian athletes to the Olympics. (Canadian Olympic Committee)

And then, the lowest blow of all, when Quebec Premier Pauline Marois gushed enthusiastically over the gold achieved by "the men's Olympic hockey team", studiously avoiding having to mouth the PQ-intolerable ... 'the Canadian men's Olympic hockey team'. Team Canada obviously is comprised solely of skilled athletes from the province of Quebec; any others within the team from elsewhere in Canada were simply incidental to the performance of the entire team, not worth mentioning. 

REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

Certainly not in the context of performing on behalf of Canada.

Some fifteen years ago or more when the old ravine acquaintances were still around with their dogs, people became aware that there was a stray dog roaming about the ravine. The dog's barking was often heard and people would view it fleetingly, as it sped away from human contact, finding shelter where people did not normally go, away from the trails.

But the dog would be seen daily, and it was the subject of much concern. People wanted to be able to approach it, to see if it wore tags identifying where it came from, but no one was able to come close enough, before the spooked dog would flee. It seemed interested in other dogs, and was friendly enough to them, but seemed to be suspicious of humans.

Eventually, someone came across a fair-sized enclosure, a type of pen often used by people to control their animals' penchant for wandering off, I guess, and within it was a 'bed' comprised of old blankets. It was obviously where the dog's owners had placed and left the dog, in an out-of-the-way area of the ravine. And it seemed just as obvious that the dog would return there for comfort as night fell, to sleep away the dark hours so that when dawn broke he would begin roaming the ravine once again.

Since the dog seemed to make no effort to find his way back to wherever his home might have been, it could be concluded that he had been driven quite a far distance from home. Alternately, that 'home' did not represent a haven and tender care, and the dog was resigned to living on its own. Fears arose that the dog would starve, and people began leaving out food for it to take, and eventually someone began to leave food at the very place where the pen with its bed was.

A resolutely determined pair in their 50s, who had a dog of their own named Sam set out to calm the dog's fears and earn its trust. Placing food out regularly where the dog slept, and having the dog on occasion see them do this eventually led to the dog's cautious trust. The two were able to convince the dog he could approach them. And that's when the dog's lonely vigil stopped and it became a cherished pet.

Both of those dogs died some years back. Occasionally we would see the man of the pair walking the ravine. He told us though his wife wanted them to adopt another dog, he wouldn't have it. His heart had broken when the two dogs had died, one following on the other, and he was not prepared to revisit that pain.

We saw them both yesterday, in the ravine. It was a windy, sunny and very cold day. Each of them was holding a very large white plastic bag, and stooping to scoop up dog waste left behind on the trails by owners who saw no need to clean up after their dogs. They're casual about this, their dedication to committing to such a public good, shrugging their shoulders and saying they were accustomed to doing it while they had their dogs, so this was just a continuation of sorts.

When he's in his workshop downstairs my husband uses his mini-laptop computer to tune in to the U.S. National Public Radio out of Boston, interested in their varied programming. At dinner last night, he told me about a program that he'd listened to, and which obviously moved him, for he sounded fairly disturbed, talking to me about what he'd listened in at.

The program focused on a kind of self-help group dedicated to giving encouragement and sympathy to people past middle-age who had been married for quite a considerable length of time and one or the other of the pair had declared their intention to leave the marriage. He had been moved by listening to the still-fresh wounds in the voices of women in particular who had evidently no idea that their spouse was no longer interested in maintaining their marriage. Who described the decision to leave as coming out of the blue, wounding them beyond their capacity to sustain themselves.

These were marriages that had lasted on average thirty-five years, when one partner had arrived at the decision that they could no longer be part of the marriage covenant, declaring their firm intention to separate, become single again. And not necessarily to find another, compatible partner. Just stating that they "can't take it any longer", for whatever the idiosyncratic reason.

Whereas I have a tendency to mentally shrug 'too bad', my husband seems to find such things beyond sad, and personally moving. I kid him that likely the women were fed up by having their speech interrupted by the husband's overbearing need to have his say. But he finds it no joking matter.

Just coincidentally I happened to be reading an article in the newspaper by a professor of psychology at Northwest University who had conducted a considerable amount of research on marital relations and more particularly the penchant for people to separate, leading to an overall statistic of 46% failures in marriage ending in divorce.

Interestingly and logically enough, there's a kind of consensus that has been reached by those involved in such research, that marriages stand and fall on the amount of time two committed people in a marriage spend with one another. That's the glue that binds, apart from having interests in common. "The average marriage today is weaker than the average marriage of yore, in terms of both satisfaction and divorce rate, but the best marriages today are much stronger, in terms of both satisfaction and personal well-being, than the best marriages of yore", according to Eli J. Finkel's conclusions.

The University of Missouri researcher Christine M. Proulx analyzed 14 longitudinal studies between 1979 and 2002 concerning martial quality and personal well-being. What came out of that analysis was the conviction that marital quality predicts better personal well-being that becomes stronger over time; the identified benefits or lack of, of good and mediocre marriages have widened over time.

A pair of articles published in the journal Psychological Inquiry saw the development of a new theory of marriage success, evidently. The major thesis of which is that people now have elevated expectations of marriage which can be achieved resulting in unprecedentedly high levels of marital quality - possible if those involved are capable of and willing to devote a good portion of time and energy within their marriage. Without that investment, marriages fall short of expectations, and fail.

No kidding. I think of myself as the limpet ferociously attached to the rock of my existence, my husband of 59 years of marriage. And counting.

The smorgasbord of assorted seeds and nuts is what continues to attract our neighbourhood wildlife to our home. It is only the black-capped chickadees that flitter around the bird feeder. And red squirrels and slate-black juncos that gather under it, to take possession of whatever drops from above.

But the main attraction is the broad top rail on the porch where my husband scatters all those seeds and nuts in abundance. That is where, every morning when we come downstairs and glance out the front door, we can see the mono-and sometimes mixed-gathering of birds and beasties that come to feast for their morning repast.

It can be a gathering of three black, one red, another grey squirrel, or a combination of a black, one wary red squirrel and close by them, though keeping a respectful distance, chickadees gathering what they may. Only the occasional visit of a crow clears everyone else out.

Throughout the day there is a regular stream of visitors and each acts somewhat differently, even within the species groups. We know, because we watch them intensely often, fascinated by their presence, grateful that we have the opportunity both to witness their being and to be able to help them survive the food scarcity of winter.

Now that the raccoons are returning nightly to our compost bins we're also a bit concerned to ensure that we place within them from time to time edible treats that we might otherwise have held onto, depositing them instead into the bins for the following night-ritual of retrieval by the hungry little animals.

We're seeing now more red squirrels, more cardinals, in the sense that the female of what is most certainly a mated pair coming around, she seeming more alert to potential danger than the male, though that may change too as it did with the male as he gained confidence in the relative safety of his presence on our porch and the security of an assured food depot.

When dusk falls the female cardinal is most likely to appear, and this also when the rabbit comes along to hunker down on the floor of the porch and nibble on the fallen seeds and nuts. A never-ending progression of visitors keeps us entertained and appreciative of what we share with the nature that surrounds us.

Despite Friday's early morning freezing rain followed by an all-day event of plain, cold rain, we discovered on Saturday that the snowpack in the ravine hadn't been much reduced, and the creek, while no longer ice-bound and now running free, wasn't that swollen with runoff. Presumably, much of it had taken place throughout the night on Friday.

Because Saturday turned out beautifully weather-benign, with the sun brightening the atmosphere and the temperature hovering at the freezing mark, there were quite a few people out rambling through the ravine trails, including those we are familiar with and those we saw yesterday for the first time. Most people who tend to frequent the ravine are there because they have companion dogs requiring exercise, benefiting both dogs and people.

As always occurs in that surrounding when people come across one another, particularly in the presence of our canine friends, introductions of a casual but warm type are frequent. And though we may not see again those new to our acquaintance, it does in a manner, broaden one's casual circle of acquaintances since most people are given to relaxing under such circumstances, some going so far as to practically reciting their life history in a capsule of extended conversation.

One man we came across halfway through our daily excursion was walking a rather shambolic looking dog. This was a cross between a Labrador, German Shepherd and Husky, a dog with a shaggy coat and the most beautiful face imaginable, with a gentle mien that would break your heart. Her companion was a corpulent man likely in his early 60s, with a pronounced limp, moving along with the assistance of a cane.

We, so accustomed to being in the ravine, knowing its contours and the difficulties surmounting them with advancing age, thought he would be like many others we see on occasion venturing into the natural confines of our neighbourhood, taking care to use only those trails that remain on high ground, not venturing beyond to those that dip and rise, following the lay of the land which is, after all, an extensive natural forested ravine.

We were more than moderately surprised to see him gaining on us after some twenty minutes had passed; he had been walking in a direction opposite to ours, but at some point had diverted onto a trail where our paths crossed again, when he was walking in the same direction as us. And though he certainly had a decided limp and required the use of that cane, he was no slouch in his advance.

Moreover, as we approached the area where the trail diverted, forking off in opposite directions, each of which required a long uphill clamber, he never hesitated but embarked on conquering the challenge of the ascent and seemingly with little trouble.

He had wanted to stand and chat, and we obliged, spending a considerable pause listening to him speak about the Winter Olympics in Sochi, and we obligingly discussing with him our shared perceptions about the event. Proud Canadians all. We chatted about many of the events and our amazement at the athletic prowess, the endurance, the amazing ability of the human body to perform manoeuvres that appear quite impossible as feats of agility resulting in exquisitely realized actions that took one's breath away.

We discussed the matter of all four judges in the final men's hockey event for the following day featuring Canada and Sweden, being Canadian, and how odd that seemed under the circumstances, when absolute neutrality is a requirement. Particularly in view of the claims that Russia and the U.S. had conspired to deny Canada a gold medal in the pairs short-dance skating performance; under that cloud of suspicion Sweden had every reason to feel uncomfortable about the outcome, despite assurances even from the Swedish hockey players that they had complete confidence in the judges since they knew them as NHL trusted referees.

SOCHI, RUSSIA - FEBRUARY 23: Chris Kunitz #14 of Canada celebrates with teammates Drew Doughty #8, Marc-Edouard Vlasic #44 and Sidney Crosby #87 after scoring a third-period goal against Henrik Lundqvist #30 of Sweden during the Men's Ice Hockey Gold Medal match on Day 16 of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics at Bolshoy Ice Dome on February 23, 2014 in Sochi, Russia. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

As for perceptions about the less able-bodied, our brief acquaintance with this man surely represented a demonstration that not all is as it is assumed to be.

Overnight Thursday, we were warned by the weather office, would bring us hours of freezing rain. On top of all the accumulated snow of the winter months and the exceedingly frigid temperatures that had made this winter an unusually cold and snowy experience in perseverance and a whole lot of shovelling, we were warned that Friday would see the freezing rain turned to ordinary rain as the temperature lofted up to a balmy two degrees Celsius.

Because of the freezing rain warning, all school buses in the area were cancelled. And throughout the day the rain just kept pelting down, aided by the wind to make for some pretty slushy and messy roads. The municipality had sent out front-end loaders to ensure that storm drains were cleared of their covering of ice and snow to be enabled to welcome and absorb the enormous run-off.

We felt badly for the birds and small animals. Whereas under normal circumstances we're hardly aware of how they manage to survive under inclement weather conditions, the fact that we now have feeding stations right at the front door, on the porch, and we stop at the glassed front door often during the day to witness the birds and animals visiting, has brought their condition directly to our attention.

The cardinal looked nothing like the glorious crimson feathered creatures we've been accustomed to seeing, instead what we saw at the feeding station was a bedraggled, utterly soaked bird. Red and black squirrels took shelter under the overhang my husband had installed to protect the seeds and nuts from becoming entirely engulfed, that temporary relief enabling them to secure all the food that was replenished and remained available to them.

The night before we had watched as the rabbit hunkered down on the porch to make good of the scattered seeds and peanuts. And this morning, after the rain had left the snowpack much reduced we noted that the tops of our composters had been set neatly aside, signalling to us that the area raccoons which had been hibernating over the previous several months had been awakened by the warmth and penetrating rain, to avail themselves of any foraging treasure of stale bread crusts, fruit and vegetable peelings and whatever else they might find to appeal to their palates.

PHOTO: Jean Levac/Postmedia News

Marie-Philip Poulin of Canada celebrates her game tying goal against the USA during third period in their Gold medal match at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games, February 20, 2014.

You don't have to be a diehard sports fan to become captured by the news coming out of Sochi with northern climate countries competing in the traditional ice- and snow-sports events. And certainly yesterday's women's hockey play-off between Canada and the United States was a tense, exciting event.

Made, perhaps, all the more so by the well-circulated animosity that exists between the players of the two teams. One might think that there would be a prevailing camaraderie between women who give themselves over so wholly to sports competition, having in common the North American experience of similar societies. Nothing could be further from reality when the word "compete" enters the formula. It seems the two sides detest one another.

And, presumably, this emotional pathology leads to ever more urgent determination on the part of the two teams to prove that one is superior to the other in their gamesmanship and execution of a team effort focused on discipline as much as spontaneity, since spontaneous reaction is what moves the game forward.

As for the game in question, it seemed as though the well-organized American women's hockey team had the game wrapped up, successfully foiling every effort of the Canadian team to score, in the absence of any successful goals by the Canadians facing the reality of two leading scores by the Americans. But then, in the final moments of the game that's not the way the game finally played out; Dame Fortune smiled benignly on the U.S. team, but gave the Canadian team the advantage to proceed to triumph.

A cartoon published in one of Canada's premier national newspapers summed it all up. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an avid hockey buff. He painstakingly wrote a book on the history of hockey, not long off the press to great critical acclaim. Coincidentally to this event at the Winter Olympics, the "three Amigos": Canada's prime minister, and the presidents of the United States and Mexico were meeting in Mexico to discuss trilateral relations and a potential refurbishing of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The United States remains notoriously disinterested in its neighbour to the north. Not one American legislator visited Canada in the year just past, for any reason related to cross-border relations, despite how incredibly integrated we are in many areas. The American national broadcaster's (PBS) television entity just recently casually closed a program with an errata, having spoken of Stephen Harper as the Canadian president.

In the immortal words of an ancient sage: we're 'chuffed'.

When we were young another lifetime ago, my husband used to chide me for my swift stride on our many hikes. Slow down, he would urge, walk at a more reasonable pace. I was impatient, I have always been impatient and that characteristic hasn't changed much with advancing age. I am too impetuous, too anxious to get things done, swiftly. At home that results in breakage of delicate objects and no end of body bruises from careening into immovable objects.

But with advancing age I'm no longer skipping up the stairs of our home as I once did, though I still manage to rush them, while gripping the banister for forward momentum. There's a mere month differential in age between us, and as it happens, I'm the elder by that month. I have slowed down, it takes more of an effort to do things, but I'm still aggressively efficient in doing whatever task I set for myself.

My husband is just as determined as I am, but he doesn't rush into things as I do, but deliberates and proceeds. Which doesn't stop him for succumbing to the all-too-human frailty of rushing things while they're in progress. Meaning that from time to time he lets down his guard when he should not, and in doing the mechanical physical things that men love to do, he comes away with his own, often far more serious wounds than I do.

We're in fairly good shape for a couple three years from approaching 80. And we continue to share our love of the outdoors. At the very least, we're committed to taking an hour, hour-and-a-half daily ramble through a ravine that sits appealingly in close proximity to our home. When we first introduced ourselves to this forested ravine we were 22 years younger and we moved at a good pace, the inclines, whether of ascent or descent then representing no challenge to our physical faculties.

Those faculties have since declined to an obvious degree. Not much for my husband, but certainly so for me. The youthful integrity of our physical capacity has answered to time's call. I no longer enjoy the physical endurance and strength to mount a speedy ascent of the kind that challenges us daily, so I must rest more frequently as we proceed, in pace with the tiredness that overwhelms me from time to time. To say that I miss my former robust state is a classic understatement. But I'm grateful that our daily excursions enjoying nature can continue because it's of great importance to us both.

When we first moved into our home on the street adjacent the ravine and ventured out onto its trails, we thought we'd discovered heaven. We no longer had to drive to the green spaces that delighted us. One of our own was found close at hand.

Now, however, it's my husband who patiently waits as we ascend hills on the trail, until I feel comfortable enough to proceed because my enthusiasm has outstripped my physical capability. While I puff for breath and rest, he stands calmly beside me, sometimes urging me to lean against him, sometimes hugging me for quiet comfort, always smiling encouragingly at me, and then we proceed until the next rest period I require to continue our daily circuit.

Was there ever a time in the annals of modern human sociology when teen-agers weren't filled with personal angst, insecurity, given to mood swings, sometimes depressed, frequently anxious about their status among their peer groups? It's a time of hormonal change that tends to be confusing to young people, trying to find their way into the society they have inherited generation after generation.

It's always been wryly recognized as a difficult psychological passage for the young, that slow and perturbing passage into maturity and eventually adulthood. Conflicting emotions assail young people and they learn to come to grips with them, sometimes by confiding in one another and supporting each other, sometimes silently and withdrawn.

The rise of social media in the current era, with the ease by which communication has been advanced through the Internet may have made young people more aware of their shared insecurities, but they remain vulnerable to their insecurities, and with the use of various modes of social media they become even more vulnerable to peer pressure.

Presently, the medical profession has entered this social dilemma perhaps prodded by anxious parents trying to pave the way in a kinder manner for their children whose confusion and perhaps intemperate reactions making them difficult to communicate with make parents fearful. Young people are being diagnosed by their doctors increasingly as falling into various categories of mental disease, from depression to more serious conditions.

They are often sent to specialists who rely not on advancing advice and presenting them with non-prescription protocols to ease their temporary plight, that flight into adulthood and intellectual security, but more expeditiously, with prescription drugs.

New Canadian research indicates that children medicated with Prozac-like drugs and other antidepressants is on a rise, three-fold over a 24-year period under study. Girls from the ages of 15 to 19 represent the heaviest users of antidepressant prescription rates rising 14.5 times over the study period.

That prescription increase is being attributed to the growing use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs. "The safety and efficacy of SSRIs in children are still controversial", stated the study's lead author, Xiangfel Meng, a research fellow in the department of psychiatry at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. Health Canada, as well as drug regulatory agencies globally have issued warnings as far back as a decade ago linking SSRIs with the increased risk of aggression, mania, suicidal thinking and "other abnormal behavioural changes", Dr. Meng added.

"We would not be surprised" if other provinces across Canada are experiencing smilmilar trends said Dr. Meng. The study was published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, pointing out that family doctors represented the major prescribers, followed by psychiatrists.

"Evidence shows that mental disorders, especially depression, are being more frequently diagnosed among children and adolescents", the study authors concluded. Obviously, there are now concerns being expressed that children are being over-diagnosed. "Are we diagnosing children and adolescents much more easily than we were?" queries Barbara Mintzes, assistant profesor with the school of population and public health, University of British Columbia.

That answer seems unequivocally yes. Data from published and unpublished trials appear to suggest that antidepressants provide limited benefit only over placebo sugar pills, for depression in the young.

Perhaps it's past time to recognize that indeed the passage of time ushers young people out of the depressive state into a more mature state of relative calm enabling them to get on with their lives without the crutch (usually harmful, with side effects) of prescription drugs.

I have always been attracted to fresh, young faces. But then, who isn't likely to react to the appeal of youth? All the desirable features of attraction seem magnified in the young. Very young children appeal to the heartstrings of those in advanced years because of the vulnerability seen in those wide-open, curious eyes, wanting to know everything about existence in one wholesale gulp of exposure to anything new.

The eagerness to experience new circumstances, and the capacity of the young to embrace new knowledge has never failed to amaze me. I am always surprised at the sagacity of observation of young people, their casual expressions of truth and reality as it appears to them.

They seem to soak up knowledge at an astonishing rate, far surpassing what I dimly recall of my own experience so many years ago, it seems like ancient personal history. As though to prove that the human mind, when new and uncluttered is capable of absorbing minutiae of which earlier generations never had exposure to in an evolving technological, more pluralistic and population-crowded society.

Children reflect their inherent personalities at a very early stage in their development. Some indications of their character are available for observation from infancy on. Character traits for good or for ill. Traits that can become enhanced or alternately modified to make them less extreme in the final analysis to present the evolving mind which experience and observation has mellowed, or conversely solidified.

But when it comes to the aesthetics of confronting the reality of youth in its dewy bloom of relative innocence, nothing so much beckons forth from my inner consciousness of joy tinged with admiration as much as the vision of a young girl either on the cusp of her maturity, or one who has entered adulthood but retains that freshness and beauty bestowed on the young, the envy of the elderly of the human species.

Within our subconscious lies a minefield of pensive regret, fears, sorrow and helplessness that our conscious mind thrusts deep below, in the knowledge that we must surmount those emotions, otherwise how can we proceed with life?

Those concerns and those fears rise from time to time, dredged up from the safe confines of the deep mind and memory to surface in dreams we often call nightmares, but are really somewhere in between both. As it was with me several nights ago with vividly seen and felt but now seldom thought of incidents of the past that come knocking on the subconscious vault of memories.

Our granddaughter speaks often with me about her apprehensions but her determination to leave home, to follow her instincts that tell her attendance at a university far, but yet not too far from home will guide her to her future. She has had several acceptances to the universities of her first and second choice, having applied to no fewer than five to ensure she wouldn't be left behind, but pleased to have been accepted by at least one of her first choices.

Attending that university will take her from rural life which she quite detests, living on the near outskirts of a fairly large city, to the largest city in Canada to attend university there. She will be living in residence, so there is some assurance there. And she will be following in the footsteps of her two uncles who migrated there as well for the same purpose, though not her mother who attended academia closer to home.

She sent links to me through her email account to give me an idea of the kind of accommodation available to her. She had just gone through the process of completing applications to her first and second choice of living accommodation on campus, after having discussed them with her mother and me.

And it was these things that apparently triggered those strange dreams for me. On the surface we applaud her determination and decision to pursue an undergraduate degree that will fit in nicely with her longer-term and larger professional choice, to study law. We're glad for her, and we're committed to financing this years-long venture leading to a satisfying professional future for her.

We do have some concerns with respect to her well-being, on her own and studying away from home, her exposure to the larger world, to the social and political circumstances she will find herself in. She is not yet 18, young and we hope, not too vulnerable, since she is practical and given to bookishness with a healthy outlook on life tinctured with a fair degree of skepticism, but a hearty helping of the perception of justice.

I dreamed of our children when they were her age, so many decades ago, preparing to leave home to attend university, and my quiet and silent panic at seeing them go, the empty feeling of their not being immediately present any longer, and how I would manage to cope with my loss and their expanding freedom. I did, and they did, but the pain of that inevitable separation obviously lingers, abiding deep beneath my immediate awareness.

It has been many years since I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I enjoyed the book, just as I had One Hundred Years of Solitude, perhaps even more so. There is a quality about the manner in which the writer described the transitory lives of people whose experiences mirror in large part, that of all those who preceded them and those who succeed them; unsurprisingly, since he wrote about the human condition, humanity with all its foibles, but most piercingly about the need that exists in the human soul to love and be loved.



The ephemeral quality of the prose, with its mystical,never-quite-there yet utterly believable presence, casts a spell over the reader, momentarily lifting the screen of practical literalism of our everyday world and our understanding of it, to invite speculative mysticism briefly into one's credulous literary experience.

When my husband brought home from our public library branch a DVD-film of the novel, my first instinct was to dismiss it. No film could capture those elusive qualities of human romantic emotions interplaying with so many other emotions, good and ill, and the grand sweep of its exotic setting. It would surely have been a failed mess of an attempt to transpose the novel into a screenplay. So I hardly expected much of it, when we viewed it last night.

When the film was over, we were both left with the very same impression, that it had been sensitively, humorously, intelligently and good-naturedly transposed from the written world to the world of the cinema with a good deal of success. We enjoyed the film, felt the acting was excellent, the screenplay successful, the filming gorgeously overwhelming to the senses.




The film, after its 2007 release, evidently did not receive much in the way of positive reviews by film critics who it appears, seemed quite convinced in their professional evaluation, that it failed utterly to capture the magic realism of Mr. Marquez's magnificent muse unfolding in his portrayal of a period-piece love triangle.

We beg to differ.

Never too old to live and learn. And in the kitchen, try out various culinary experiments that may or may not turn out to your liking. And to repeat old favourites. My husband's favourite type of dessert is a cream pie. Coconut cream, banana cream, he loves them. I don't. Nor do I enjoy producing them. But, occasionally I relent. And last Friday was one of those occasions. He'd like a coconut cream pie, so I'd produce one.

Of course the ingredients and the how-to are in my head, but I thought I'd see what the Internet had that was perhaps different. I found one recipe with a full range of approval stars and focused on it. Five egg yolks in the filling, whipped cream topping, and butter used in the making of the pie crust. And the recipe's author spoke of the rave results.

When I did the pie, I thought I'd try her recommendation of 50% butter, so I used Crisco shortening as usual, supplementing it with 50% of the amount I usually use, with butter. Baked it and it looked fairly good. Then filled it with the filling which I'd prepared with 2% milk and three eggs, reserving the egg white for a whipped frothy top of egg white, in lieu of the whipped cream.

The crust, unfortunately was tough and unappealing to the fork and the palate. But my husband loved the filling and the meringue, which was the main thing, obviously. And then the following week he came across a recipe for a 'coffee cake' published in the local newspaper that he thought looked intriguing. So did I, and I offered to bake it for yesterday's dessert.

Apple Sweet Bread

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
2/1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. each ground cinnamon and nutmeg
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla
2 apples, peeled, cored and coarsely grated (about one cup)
1/2 cup unsweetened desiccated coconut
1/2 cup raisins
Combine the dry ingredients; whisk egg, sugar, oil and vanilla; add flour mixture, then stir in apple, coconut and raisins. Spread in prepared 8"-by4" loaf pan, for an hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

I don't like using oil in baking, so substituted the oil for margarine and increased the volume to a half-cup, and used two eggs instead of one, slightly increasing the amount of flour to compensate. The result was a slightly moist, light and delightfully fruity loaf cake. I had also prepared a crumb topping comprised of 1/4-cup flour, 1/4-cup dark brown sugar, 1/4-tsp cinnamon, tbsp.Becel margarine, and 1/4-cup chopped walnuts.

The resulting product was excellent.

The trails in the ravine have flattened out very nicely, thanks to the last several snowstorms which have filled in those tricky-to-manoeuvre places where back in January during the temporary thaw when the snowpack became slushy, footprints were sometimes etched deep into the snow in places, leaving veritable yawning chasms conspiring to trap the unwary hiker. More than a few people have found themselves with twisted ankles resulting from the chopped up trails.

But that's all behind us now, since those gaping holes have been nicely filled in. And although it's been horribly icy, temperature-wise, with more than a few days of miserable high winds driving the chill deep into clothing interstices, freezing noses and digits in the process, sunny days have ameliorated the situation, giving us at least a hint that spring is on its tardy way, or will be eventually.

Unlike the day preceding it, yesterday Riley was able to trot through the ravine without having to be picked up to ease his freezing little footpads. We knew we should have put his boots on, but thought we could get away with toughing it out, rather than irritate him with the process of getting them on.  Nor, given how well the snow has now been tamped down, did he accumulate those irritating iceballs stuffed deep into his pads, making his progress awkward.

Strangely enough, it was on Tuesday when the wind sent its nasty fingers of ice through our piled-on garments, stinging our faces and freezing our cheeks, that we saw a larger than normal number of people out walking their dogs. Walking quickly, though never loathe to stand about for a few moments, talking. Their companion dogs were invariably large and young and boisterously enthusiastic. Truth was, even at that chill temperature, it represented a break from our previously long spell of minus-16 to -20 Celsius that we've been coping with.

Yesterday we came across a young man we've often seen before, walking his happily energetic little Whippet, grace in motion, wearing his warm winter jacket. And accompanying them were two matched-for-cuteness little Maltese terriers. This was the first time in the ravine for the pair of white female Maltese, and they were excitedly veering about, seemingly everywhere at once.

When we come across scenarios like this, stand and talk with ravine hiking acquaintances, watch their companion animals enjoy the freedom to roam about in a natural environment, it adds considerably to our own enjoyment and the privilege we have, to do the same.

It is extremely cold and continues to be extremely cold. We have a weather system arriving that will give us milder temperatures, at least around minus-6 degrees for the high, accompanied by snow events, not that we don't already have ample snow cushioning the landscape.

And with thoughts of the difficulties facing the birds and small animals in our area, with diminished foraging opportunities and winter conditions offering fewer nutritional options, we've fully committed to helping in our own small way. Apart from our daily peanut depots cached in our nearby ravine, we've amassed a wild-bird pantry full of all manner of seeds and tiny peanuts in an excellent mix that includes black oiled sunflower seeds.

My husband bought a large bird feeder, and a collection of suet balls to hang in the front gardens. The suet has been up for over a week and we've never really seen any birds taking to it, but it's probably mostly woodpeckers that would, and they don't seem to leave the confines of the wooded ravine, though we see the Pileated often, not so often the much smaller hairy and downy woodpeckers. At our daughter's home in the countryside her various birdfeeders and suet balls are always crowded with birds, from red polls to oriels, chickadees and juncos.

We've had chickadees aplenty and juncos as well, though not yet any nuthatches, to the feeder. Still, it seems as though all of the birds prefer our original offering place, the wide top rail of our front porch, to the bird feeder, let alone the suet.

And the squirrels, red, black and grey, find the seeds and the peanuts irresistible in this time of seasonal deprivation. We're happy to see them all, taking advantage of whatever they can find to allow them to weather the long cold winter days and nights.

We were surprised and happy, in a way, to see the rabbit that has been chomping on our backyard shrubs out on the porch again, this time in broad daylight, yesterday afternoon, nibbling away on the seeds and nuts the more careless feeders fling from the porch rail to the floor of the porch. Concerned that he was revealing himself in the light of day, since its habit is to come out nocturnally, the dark offering shelter from potential predators.

We'll just have to trust to nature's benevolence allowing some of her creatures to escape the feeding cycle. We don't usually see hawks and owls beyond the ravine and into the more urbanized streets, but there are predatory neighbourhood cats always on the prowl. Their presence disconcerting, particularly when on occasion we come across the sad carcass of one of their kills.

But the extreme cold and high humidity combined with wind, also seems to work to diminish the enthusiasm of household cats for roaming about in these icy months, giving the existential upper hand, albeit temporarily, to the small wild creatures that frequent our feeding stations.

We're almost in mid-February, on the downward side of Old Man Winter. How far away can spring be? Close, but in our minds, viewing the snow-laden environment that surrounds us, too far. We read in yesterday's paper that the process of freeing up the Rideau River from its winterbound state is beginning. Early this year, it seems.

City of Ottawa crews get started on the annual ice breaking operations on the Rideau River. Photograph by: Chris Mikula, Ottawa Citizen

 

As we drove the Ottawa River Parkway from our west-end location to arrive in downtown Ottawa, heading for the Byward Market, we passed the Rideau Falls and could see the activity commencing. The keys were being cut, had been cut, and orange-suited municipal workers could be seen below, struggling with huge saws and another contraption that is new to us, a larger, more technologically advanced ice-cutting device. Purportedly, its use has minimized the need for explosives.

Powerful saws make quick work of the ice as a work crew cuts slots or ‘keys’ in the Rideau River.  Photograph by: Wayne Cuddington, Ottawa Citizen

 

Explosives are still being used, but minimally, only in areas where the machines cannot be useful because it's too difficult to position them usefully in certain places.

Before long March will arrive, and the opportunity to see impressively huge ice pans floating downriver, tumbling off the elevated portion of the river just beside the falls into the river below, their weight causing them to sink in an immense splash of freezing river water, surfacing soon afterward to continue their journey downstream will beckon. It's quite the sight, fascinating to watch as this hugely thick ice sheets slide past, crash below and float serenely on.


Ice blocks over the Rideau Falls at the Ottawa river 
 
When we first saw this yearly event, we were amazed. The power and majesty of the natural elements that surround us never fails to impress us. In the event, this key-cutting exercise is a preemptive effort to forestall flooding, a natural enough occurrence that can have grave consequences to public safety and the destruction of the hundreds of buildings existing along the river shoreline.

The amphibex can crawl up on the ice surface and break it apart using its weight alone. If that doesn’t work, the hydraulic arm can finish the job.     Photograph by: Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen